Flippy.

Good News! Baby is now head-down! Hopefully it will stay that way for the next 11 weeks or so. It's pretty weird, I can usually feel now where baby's butt is and I can feel when it turns it's head and all that other squirmy stuff. Of course I still get all of the crazy punches and stuff that keep me up at night. Baby is almost as long as it will be at birth. According to my books, baby is about 16-18 inches long right now. So it only has a couple more inches to grow. However, it still only weighs about 3 pounds, so it still needs to fatten up and double that before birth.

I think I have decided where to put the birthing tub in the house. I was nervous about having it downstairs because I thought I might want to be on the same floor as the bathroom, but yesterday Katie and Anne (our midwife and her assistant) assured me that they will probably be making me do a lot of stair-climbing anyway and that if I'd be more comfortable with the pool downstairs then that is probably what I should do. Other things we did / talked about at my appointment yesterday: drew some blood to check my hemoglobin, measured fundal height, checked baby's heart beat, and scheduled our next appointment. From here on our appointments get more frequent. We are now starting every other week visits and in about 6 weeks we will be going every week.

Tonight we start birthing classes with Anne (midwife's assistant and also a doula). She is going to come to our house and teach us everything we need to know. Of course she won't teach us everything tonight, but we'll get a start and then we'll meet with her several more times over the next month or two. I think tonight we will be starting with talking about early labor and stuff and she is also going to give us some bios on some of the doulas that she works with. We are pretty certain that we are going to hire a doula now, but we don't really know any of them very well. So hopefully after tonight we'll at least have a lead on someone whose personality would mesh with our plans/goals.

Other fun news, I'm done with orientation at work, so I'm now only working a 0.8 instead of 1.0... with equates with 2 extra days off per pay period. So hopefully that will give me enough time to get the house cleaned up a little before the baby shower (which is in about 3 weeks!).

Baby gifts, and someplace to put them

Hey! First of all, if anyone is planning on getting any big, awesome gifts for DittleBittle or Mommy for the baby shower, let me know so we don't get two of the same big, awesome gifts - which would kind of diminish the big-awesome-ness of the second one... :)

Speaking of big gifts - we finally started the task of getting a room ready, in which to keep the baby (and all it's big and awesome as well as tiny baby-ish things). It was part of various house-related tasks we did this weekend with the help of my very able mother (he wrote - to postpone calling her "grandma" for as long as possible), including lots of cleaning and painting.

It was a fairly productive weekend for "the family" all things considered.

New Belly Pictures! :)

Yay! Baby must be growing :) Seee?


In other news, Target is having a "buy 2 things for free shipping" baby sale online - in case anybody is considering buying two things from Target.... :)

Target Registry

For those who may be wondering, we are registered at Target. Here is a link to our registry, but you can also print it out at the little kiosk in the store if you want to.


Target Registry

Blanket.

I finally finished baby's quilt last night! It turned out pretty decent, considering that I've never made a blanket before.

The back is the flannel stars

and the front is cotton squares. It's hard to see, but there are periwinkle colored tie-downs to hold the batting in place.

Now I can resume working on the bear suit (which is about 3/4 done already!). I'll post pics of that as soon as it's complete. Maybe I can even find a nearby baby to model it!

Nancy.

At work today, a fellow RN named Nancy predicted to me that the baby will be a boy. She said (and several other nurses testified to her behalf) that she has accurately predicted the sex of every baby that has been born by staff on that floor... which apparently has been about 5 babies in the last two years... as well as accurately predicted the sex of all of her 6 grandchildren. She also stated that she predicted what their names were going to be and that she has a sixth sense about these things. I'm not going to release the name that she predicted we would choose, I'm not sure about it for a first name, but it is one that I like for a middle name. Not only can she predict the sex of current babies-to-be, she can also predict the number of children that one will have and if they will be boys or girls or whatnot. I guess she hasn't been wrong yet. She should open up some kind of business, I bet there are plenty of ladies who would pay to have this information. It seems that her error rate is far less than that of the draino test... and so far it is even better than the error rate of a 20 week ultrasound... but I suppose she'll need a few more predictions before we can scientifically change her psychic abilities from theory to law.

Sickness.

Me and the baby just recovered from a horrid 24 hour stomach bug adventure. Around 2am on Saturday morning I woke up to find that I was pukey and I was also having a lot of contractions. After throwing up a while, I thought that maybe I would feel better and that I probably just ate something that baby didn't like. The contractions kept getting more frequent and more painful and I started getting really bad back pain and I was pretty sure I was going into pre-term labor. I was pretty scared. I called Katie (midwife) who promptly came over to my house and checked me out and assured me that my cervix was still closed and that baby was not going to be joining us any time soon. So I called into work and told them that I was sick and wouldn't be there that evening, and then I settled in for a fun-filled day of sickness. Baby either A)loved it when I was sick; or B)absolutely hated it when I was sick - because baby was going completely NUTS and was just bouncing around like a little chipmunk in there. It was probably the most uncomfortable feeling ever when I was already feeling nauseous and baby kept punching me in the belly. It was moving around so much that even Joe (who doesn't notice much movement) could see my belly jumping around. It was like my stomach was one of those Mexican Jumping Bean things and the baby was the little worm inside that was making it pop around like crazy.

So anyways, on Sunday morning I felt a lot better (not completely better, but decent) and I decided to move on with my life and go to work that afternoon. Work went alright and I survived the night, even though baby still seemed a bit traumatized by the events of the weekend and was still acting like a little fruitloop and causing some mild contractions. Today we feel much better though and are going to go run some errands now. Fun stuff.